Ep #101: Managing Other People s Emotions

Ep #101: Managing Other People's Emotions

Full Episode Transcript

With Your Host

Victoria Albina, NP, MPH

Feminist Wellness with Victoria Albina, NP, MPH

Ep #101: Managing Other People's Emotions

This is Feminist Wellness, and I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner, Functional Medicine Expert, and Life Coach, Victoria Albina. I'll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome my love, let's get started.

Hello, hello my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. Here we are at episode 101. Fun new intro, new vibe, very exciting. I hope you enjoy it. I want to take a moment to give a massive shout-out to my producers Pavel and Angela at Digital Freedom Productions.

They are absolutely the best ever, and if you're ever looking for producers for your podcast, they're the folks to call. Thank you, Angela and Pavel for being patient, loving, and kind with me and for sending me pictures of your adorable kiddo. I'm so grateful for you and all of your support.

Okay, so this week, I want to talk about something I see in pretty much all of my clients in my six-month program, Overcoming Codependency. And as always, totally did myself in many different ways for years and years. And that is believing that it's on you, it's your job to manage other people's moods, feelings, and emotions for them.

With your family, or friends, your partner, at work, even on the subway some days. So my beauty, do any of these sound familiar? Your partner is annoyed so you try to make them laugh or distract them. Your mom is mad at your dad, so you try to make her see the good in him so she won't be so angry. An employee of yours is upset about a new policy that came down from corporate, so you try to convince them that it's not that bad, versus listening to their concerns.

As a child, your parents fight frequently, or a parent is emotional labile or volatile. Their moods aren't reliable, or they have outburst of anger or

Feminist Wellness with Victoria Albina, NP, MPH

Ep #101: Managing Other People's Emotions

sadness, so you learn to do your best to be the perfect girl, the good girl, to get straight As, accolades, prizes, blue ribbons, or you clean the house or otherwise try to lessen the burden on them as though that would change their mood and make the home feel safer to you.

Finally, you want to break up with someone, but you worry that they'll be upset. So instead of telling them honestly and directly what's not working in the relationship, you make it all about you. It's not you. It's me.

In these situations and so many more, we try to manage other people's emotions for them, as though that was actually possible. Because it feels like our job to get people out of what we see as "bad moods" and yes, that's an air quotes. And they're perfectly understandable reasons why we do this, but my love, it doesn't serve adult you or the people in your life to do this. So let's dive in and talk all about it.

We'll start by saying you are not bad or wrong if you do this. And if this is a habit of yours, a pattern in your mind, you likely may not even realize you're doing it. There's no need for shame, blame, or guilt here, my kittens. So what we're talking about here is not just humans showing up for one another.

Coregulating nervous systems, connecting, being loving, and kind. All of that is fantastic. What we're talking about are situations where we feel a drive within is to attempt to change someone's mood, often at our own expense, in that way that is typical of codependent thinking.

In the presence of big feelings, we can suddenly start to feel wildly uncomfortable. If I'm not even comfortable with my own feelings, I'm sure not going to be comfortable with yours. And what's often happening underneath all that emotion is this super subconscious codependent logic

Feminist Wellness with Victoria Albina, NP, MPH

Ep #101: Managing Other People's Emotions

within us that says I'm not safe if they're not happy, I can't be happy if they're not happy.

Let me give an example. I was talking to a client of mine, Tina, and she was sharing that her 22-year-old daughter recently failed out of university. And Tina was sharing how frustrated she is that she tries to tell her daughter day after day what she should be doing to be happier in life.

And in my client's own words, she says that her daughter is moping around the house and not getting anything done and not being productive. My client shared that she thinks if her daughter is not being productive, she can't be happy.

And so Tina spends her days telling her daughter what she should do, what she needs to do in order to be happy. She's trying to manage her daughter's emotions because she's uncomfortable seeing her daughter struggling and allowing her to figure it out on her own.

She thinks it's her job to give unsolicited advice. Advice the kid didn't ask for and clearly doesn't want. And caveat here, her daughter's not suicidal. This isn't a case in which it really is imperative for someone to step in. This is a 22-year-old trying to figure it out and effectively handling this on her own.

But her mom is linking her own happiness to that of her daughter. She's telling herself that if her daughter is unhappy, then she herself is unhappy and it's her job to fix it. As long as that story is the one she keeps thinking, it's going to be hard for her to be happy unless her daughter changes her mood.

Feminist Wellness with Victoria Albina, NP, MPH

Ep #101: Managing Other People's Emotions

But not just happy. Joyful in the way that Tina thinks is the right way to be happy. Finding joy through productivity. But what she's doing by insisting her way is the best and linking it with her own emotional state is she's depriving her daughter the chance to figure it out on her own. And she's creating an adversarial relationship there.

Listen, no one likes to be managed or told how they should feel. And in that kind of a situation, when you insist that your way is the way, you're not building trust. In fact, quite the opposite. So what's motivating Tina?

Well, she grew up in a household where messy feelings weren't allowed. A family where codependent thinking was modeled by both of her parents. And she believes that in her heart, she's being a good parent by telling her kiddo what to do because that's what she saw as parenting growing up.

But mostly what it is is that Tina gets to attempt to push away the kid's sadness, which is something that she is uncomfortable with. So she wants to put a kiss on it and make it feel better, which is really cute when that works with a two-year-old, but doesn't serve her adult daughter and is not a loving way for two adults to connect in mutuality, recognizing each one of them to have autonomy.

It's not an interdependent way to connect. It's a codependent way. So when you are looking to manage your own anxiety, stress, or worry, through attempting to manage someone else's feelings, it's always a losing game. And you will lose 100% of the time.

Because if the story goes, I'm only happy if my husband is happy, then you've given away your power to create your own feelings. Because no one is happy 100% of the time. That's not how life works. Even repeating that

Feminist Wellness with Victoria Albina, NP, MPH

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